Youtube Upgrades Their Youtube Creator Playbook

Youtube has upgraded their Youtube Creator Playbook or guide book.  This is their third revamp of their guidebook since the few short months beforehand, when they had released their “updated”  playbook in  February  of 2012.  However, as you well know,  things change quickly on the internet.  With all the new Youtube interface changes, internal analytics panel changes and general interaction changes that have occurred since February 2012, they definitely needed to upgrade their guidebook to be a one stop kickstart resource for creating great video content on Youtube.

They now have a dedicated link for the Youtube Creator playbook, and  they provide a supporting blog that is geared mostly for  Youtube partners, but it’s still a good idea to check it out on occasion  to keep informed of all of Youtube’s ongoing changes.  The site is an easier read than before and at the end of every unit they provide a downloadable checklist so you can use this information to use as a set of guidelines to follow when creating your videos and to boost the effectiveness of your video content.

One of the key factors that has changed (and is reflected in the Video Manager Analytics area of your Youtube account) is that Youtube now tracks the number of minutes that your viewers are engaged with your video content.  They are not solely counting video hits any longer.  Youtube provides an actual count of the time or how  many minutes your viewers are watching your content and provides a top ten list of your most popular videos for the content creator to evaluate in your analytics statistics.

I have a previous post with the old playbook that was filled with a lot of the how-to’s in video creation.  But that playbook  was on a Slideshare type of presentation format, and I wanted to upgrade the blog with this newer information.  By the way, they do provide a link in order to download the 114 page guidebook as a pdf file, if you prefer.

Related Post

Youtube Makes Video Guide Ebook  Available to Youtube Publishers

Why Storytelling Videos Are Popular Ways to Advertise Small Businesses

When it comes to online web video content, “Once Upon A Time” is not the phrase you usually associate with small business online marketing. But the growth of online video content and popular “storytelling” videos are providing growth for this part of the industry even during  a downturn in the economy.  Interestingly enough, according to a recent  Web Video Marketing council’s article, the development of  web video content for advertising has contributed to a growth in jobs for 2011.  Their study, commissioned by the IAB found that…

“Research from the Harvard Business School claims that the entire ad-supported ecosystem of the Internet contributed $530 billion and about 2 million U.S. jobs to the economy last year. The work was commissioned by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), a global non-profit representing over 500 media and technology companies.

The IAB claims its members collectively sell 86 percent of all online advertising in the U.S.

The Harvard Business School research notes that much of the growth occurred among small businesses, in reference to the job creation figure.”

While many types of video content is being produced, videos with storytelling from the customer’s point of view are becoming a more popular way of associating a brand with its product.  What are these videos exactly?   Whether it’s an auto manufacturing company showing customers reflecting on past memories of when  they bought their very first (insert brand here) car, or a mom reflecting on the cupcakes she baked from a brand mix and how it made her feel, in essence brands are encouraging consumers to be a part of the story by recalling their own experiences.

These videos are showing up on corporate websites to humanize or personalize the corporate website’s brand.  Most of these human interest stories are so popular that they show up on Facebook, Twitter and other popular social sharing sites.  Take for example, Dollar Shave club’s popular video that went viral and ended up with 5 million views.

According to a Search Engine Watch blog post , what Dollar Shave Club achieved  was nearly phenomenal!  Search Engine Watch calculated  how much this type of advertising coverage was worth to the startup business in terms of its potential advertising costs via a traditional medium.  They compared it to the results that Dollar Shave Club would have gotten had they chosen to go down the more traditional and less creative way of competing within the market.

“ The average CPC (cost per click) for a group of “shave” related keywords is currently around $1.

If you’re a start-up, you don’t really want to be spending $5,140,887 in PPC within your first month. You’re unlikely to make it past the end of your first week at that rate!

But what Dollar Shave Club has achieved is to get in-front of just as many people/eyeballs, but without the associated costs that come with each click.”

Another example of an engaging small business Youtube hit, and this in the UK, was the one pound fish man as seen in the video below:

This is the power of compelling video and stories that have do to with the customer or client interacting with the product in a positive way.

The three reasons these videos are successful and what you need to consider and apply when producing your video content are:

1. The videos come across as authentic if they are not done in a salesy or corporate speak way.  The subject matter is believable and  the informal way the person shares his memory makes the video content a lot more authentic.
2. The endorsement is provided by the customer in a warm, friendly manner. When the subject in the video is telling a compelling story the endorsement seems credible even when he or she is recalling a 10 year old memory of interacting with the product.
3. This type of “storytelling” video content personalizes the brand. They bring the brand down to the consumer level, which is appreciated by a prospective consumer, and proves to be very motivational.

And what small businesses and other advertisers have found is that these videos are a lot more shareable.  You are not likely to send a friend or loved one a traditional commercial; but a video that is either funny, or tells a unique story with subtle branding is more likely to be socially shared.

It will be interesting to see more small business success stories as they find ways to incorporate “storytelling” videos in their small business marketing.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Photo credit: Design by Itzik Gur

Youtube Gets a Slicker and Cooler Interface But Is It A Real Improvement?

As we get nearer to  the end of the year, and often many companies prepare by rolling new bells and whistles,  Youtube has rolled out a major overhaul on their design interface.  While it does look a lot sleeker and adds a host of options it will be interesting to see if this overhaul will actually enhance viewer experience.  It’s an interesting risk since Youtube has pulled away from it’s simple and clean interface.  The following video has a quick overview of the customization options that are now available.

This is Youtube’s new front page interface, of course with some of my own interface options, so the view may look different from your own.

Design wise the interface looks great but if you are already struggling to keep up with all the options available to you in developing your Youtube channel,  Youtube has just  upped the ante.  In fact there are mixed opinions on these new changes, and videos with access to script changes to revert back to the old interface are becoming readily available.  Even the video posted above has several thousand dislikes.

In my opinion, perhaps Youtube wasn’t forthcoming on how drastic the changes would be and have irritated their loyal users to say the least.  I will be tweaking and updating my own channel in the following weeks and checking under the hood, so to speak, on design changes.

What Does A Video Editor Do?

A Video Editor makes his  (or her) living by using digital video equipment and software to edit the post production work of film or video production, usually referred to as post-production work, (the work that is completed after all video or film has been shot, narration completed and sound tracks accumulated).

Video editing work has mainly been associated with the Film, Television and Broadcasting industries where most video editors are employed either as employees of post-production houses  or work as freelance workers and their work or duties are more specialized to the task they perform for the Film and Broadcasting industry such as film, sound or music editors.

The 3 Areas of Your Small Business’ Video Production Budget

With the amazing growth of Youtube and other video sharing sites, video has become widely accepted as a growing and viable way to effectively market your small business.  But most small business marketers who are getting ready to create their marketing video, don’t know what are the various budget  line items and tasks involved in producing their video. The following summary should give you a general idea of what to include in your budget for a small scale marketing video and whether the video is a one man production or a large scale Hollywood style production the video’s production tasks and budget can usually be divided into these three areas.

3 Video Marketing Ideas to Boost Product Sales and Increase Website Traffic

With the explosion of video sharing sites, such as Youtube and Vimeo, and the increase of the marketing potential of viral videos, there are a variety of video marketing ideas that are rapidly developing and becoming available even to the small business marketer.  Keep in mind though ,  not all of these video technologies are applicable to every type of business. Some ideas are more suitable for business to business audiences and others are more suitable for business to consumer audiences.  Your video content needs to be modified for your target audience.

Obviously, other factors to consider are the size of your own business and your marketing budget.  But, don’t be discouraged if you don’t have the huge advertising budgets that  corporations or Fortune 500 companies have at their disposal. With the advent of new video technologies, there are more and more affordable video products and services coming on the market to provide affordable video content creation in order to market your product or services to your customers. The following ideas discuss developing video content for small businesses that sell products to consumers and to some extent can be modified to work for some services.